Augmented reality and UAVs in archaeology: Development of a location-based AR application

In addition to the current use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in archaeology, oriented to rebuild the historical evolution of an archaeological area by using aerial photogrammetry and relief of archaeological objects, is possible to consider the fruition through augmented reality. By using jointly UAVs and augmented reality, it is possible to explore sites which are not often directly accessible from the user and from different perspectives, by providing various types of contextual information (3d models, textual information, etc.) and directly on site. This work deals with a feasibility study for the development of a location-based AR Android application supporting the fruition of a given archaeological site from an aerial perspective, by exploiting UAVs and augmented reality. The main contribution of the work was the integration between the Wikitude SDK augmented reality framework and the DJI Mobile SDK and led to the development of DJIARcheoDrone, a first prototype of the application.